


Regarding Anita

by PlotWitch



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-24
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 17:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 15,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13618566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlotWitch/pseuds/PlotWitch
Summary: Edward takes steps to ensure that Van Cleef will never get his hands on Anita. But he never expects to botch his assassination attempt, nor does he expect to have to clean up the aftermath.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Regarding Henry_ goes to the Anitaverse.

Jean-Claude turned as she entered the room. So did every other preternatural creature in the lower levels of the Circus. Anita's coming tonight had been heralded by the scent of sex and death. And blood. Lots of blood, until the scent had raised the hackles of every creature in the room. Lycanthrope eyes slid to amber and emerald and every vampire turned to her expectantly.  
  
She stumbled into the room, eyes wide. Dark circles hung under them and her clothes were soaked through until they were nearly black with blood. More than she should have been coated in, if the only things she had killed tonight were the animals needed to raise her zombies.  
  
"Ma petite…" His voice was soft and echoed through the suddenly silent room as she made her way towards him. "You smell of sex and death."  
  
She gave him a weak smile as she slid into his arms. Bonelessly, was the only word he could think to describe it. And as he brushed hair from her forehead she sought his gaze.  
  
"It's not all mine," she whispered as she touched her own forehead with trembling fingers. They came away bloody and her eyes went a little more dazed than they had been. "At least, not most of t."  
  
And then she went limp in his arms, and Jean-Claude could see the tiny but perfect hole in her temple, and the lead of a bullet not far beneath.


	2. Chapter 2

Sarah Clark was reaching the end of her shift when she made her last rounds in the ICU of St. Louis General. It was silent on the floor; there was no talking, not even from the visitors who remained despite the late hour. Most of the patients had been there for several months, and the families had finally given up the routine of come in and talking to their loved ones through the entire visit.  
  
It wasn’t that they'd lost hope, though that could be part of it, Sarah mused. It was just that they'd realized that while survival wasn’t slim, waking up was. Over ninety percent of the patients in the ward were comatose, a fact that always seemed to eat at Sarah.

What bothered her about it wasn't that they were in comas, but the fact that if they did wake up they'd lost so much time to live. This was why Sarah always had a smile for the visitors, a soothing voice for any ears that listened.  
  
And she believed that the patients listened. They were just stuck somewhere while their bodies recovered enough for them to become again. Of course, sometimes their bodies never did. But Sarah tried to avoid thinking about that. Negative thoughts would get her patients nowhere.  
  
She was hitting her third patient when she realized why it was so quiet in the unit—there was only one visitor and he was asleep. It was the short blond man who came to visit this woman everyday. She couldn't remember his name. In fact, the only name she could remember was that of the Master of the City. He came to visit this patient every few days.  
  
Sarah smiled as she remembered who the patient was without having to consult the chart. Anita Blake. A well known animator and one of the licensed vampire executioners for the state. She'd had a lot of  
visitors at first, especially because it was such a shock for her to be here. But they'd dwindled at the beginning of her second month. Her family still came to visit, Sarah knew this much, but they only came once a week now.  
  
But she did have at least one visitor every day. The Master of the City of course, and an attractive man with long brown hair. A small group of people came in, too. Two men and a woman, always together. Someone had told her they were lycanthropes, but she'd never been able to tell that for herself.

She'd also been told that most of Anita's visitors were lycanthropes or vampires, a thought that made her nervous simply because it was a hospital and the scent of blood was under everything. Sarah could never smell it, but she knew it was there, right under the biting antiseptic that dominated the halls. She’d read somewhere that blood brought out the… lack of humanity in them.  
  
But Anita’s other visitors were human. Even Sarah could tell that. A married couple stopped in every weekend, and so did a blond man. Sarah had avoided that particular blond man. He'd given her chills the first time she'd done her rounds with him there. He'd made her very uncomfortable.

Pleasant enough, she could admit to that, but his smiles never reached his eyes. She'd always thought that he'd rather ignore her than be nice, but she wasn't sure if ignoring was the word she should use.  
  
But the man who was asleep next to Anita's bed wasn't that man. He came every few days, not like this one who came every day. This man was much nicer, really sweet. She'd liked him the first time she'd met him, he'd been so nice. He was a lycanthrope, too. He’d told her himself once.  
  
Sarah shook herself out of her thoughts and glanced at the charts she held in her hand. According to it everything was normal about Anita Blake, barring the fact that she was comatose. As Sarah checked the monitor's she couldn't shake the feeling that something had changed. But true to records, nothing had.

Except… Sarah shook her head as she turned away to move to the next patient. It was just a feeling, but she couldn't shake it. And as she turned back for a fleeting glance of the sleeping man she saw it.  
  
Anita's eyes were open.


	3. Chapter 3

Her eyes hurt. There was a brightness in the room but she didn't know what it was. Shapes and colors. They were so brilliant, so beautiful.

And they itched. At least, she thought they did. Something itched her, but she couldn't scratch it. Her hands wouldn't move, her arms wouldn't rise.  
  
Why wouldn't her arms move? She was scared. Nothing would move; she couldn't even turn her head to the side to see the shadow that suddenly fell across her. She felt something wet on her face and realized she was crying. Crying… tears. They were water.

She would have smiled at the realization if she hadn't been so scared.  
  
The shadow was a woman, now leaning over her. She had pale hair and dark eyes. And she was smiling. Why was she smiling? She must be happy, and Anita wanted to know why.  
  
"Welcome back, Anita," the smiling face said. "I'm Sarah."

A gentle hand wiped the tears away and then was gone, and the voice was soft and soothing. "Don't be scared. Your doctor is on her way. She'll help you."  
  
And then it was gone. But she wasn't so afraid now. There was someone who was going to help her. And that wasn't scary at all.


	4. Chapter 4

A day later Anita was sitting up. Or leaning up against her raised bed. They had taken her off of the life support and only left the IV's in. they itched. She still itched, but she knew why now.

It was people. The people who said they were her friends. First it had been Jason. He'd told her he was a werewolf, and it was his power that did it. Now it was the dark and silent man sitting next to her bed who said it.

He also said that they were dating, and lovers.

And he scared her.

She didn't like being scared. Sarah didn't scare her. Sarah was nice.

And Sarah was here now, smiling. She always smiled. Anita liked that. Her smile was real, and the others didn't smile like that.

They always smiled and looked sad. Sarah never looked sad, she was always happy.

Anita had tried smiling already and Sarah had told her that she was making good progress. She'd even helped Anita when she'd tried saying her name. She had, but it had taken a long time and had sounded so   
awful.

But Sarah had said that it was because she hadn't spoken in a very long time. And then she'd practiced with Anita, saying her name over and over until it sounded nice. Nice and normal.

Sarah was smiling again, her happy smile, and her voice was bright. Bright as the lights. Anita knew what they were now and that made her happy.

"You have another visitor, Anita. Would you like to see him?"

She nodded. It was more of a limp flopping of her head, but Sarah knew what it was and sent the man in. he was tall and pale and looked very dark with his long black hair and his ruffly black shirt. Anita wanted to laugh, the shirt looked so ridiculous.

" _Ma petite_ ," he said. It echoed inside her head, just like Richard's voice had, and she felt fear run up her spine.

Their voice made her feel naked, like she couldn't hide anything, and she was scared to think that they knew it. Maybe they didn't, she thought, hoping. If they knew they might eat her. Well, Richard would. He was a werewolf and they ate people didn't they?

"I am Jean-Claude, ma petite. Do you not remember me?" he said smiling. She saw fangs, he was smiling so wide, and she knew that he was a vampire. He might eat her too.

As she thought that Jean-Claude's smile faded a little, and Anita was certain that he knew what she was thinking. She was very scared now. If he knew what she was thinking he'd kill her and eat her, she was sure of it.

His smile went away completely and he looked very… it wasn't happy.

Anita knew what happy looked like. Maybe he was mad. Then he said, "I love you."

Richard had said that too. Anita smiled and said it back. It was scratchy and a little hoarse, but she'd said it. Now she could say two things: her name and ‘I love you.’

She could tell people who she was when she met them now. She'd already met Sarah, she couldn't tell her it, but when she got a visitor again she'd know what to say.

Yes, she'd know what to say.

When Anita looked back up she saw Sarah standing by the door. Jean-Claude and Richard were leaving. Sarah was smiling at Anita, happy.

"I'm sorry, Anita. You have another visitor and I don't want too many people in the room at once."

Anita smiled to show she understood. She didn't really, but Sarah was so nice. She wouldn't do anything to hurt her. 

Anita was still smiling when Sarah left and a pale blond man stepped around the corner. He wasn't smiling. That was wrong, he should smile. Maybe if she said it he'd smile. And he was a new visitor too.

Anita smiled brightly. "I love you."


	5. Chapter 5

Edward winced. Those had been the last words out of his mouth before he’d shot Anita. That tiny piece of lead that had been lodged inside her skull was his fault. His and his alone. And now she was throwing the words back into his face, taunting him.

Or was she?

He looked closer at her face. She was still pale, very pale, and had dark circles under her eyes. But her eyes… her smile… Something wasn’t right.

“Anita?” he said softly as he stepped closer to the bed.

She smiled even wider. “That’s who I am,” she said proudly.

And Edward felt his world drop out from beneath him. He sank into the chair next to her bed and stared. She’d lived, which he hadn’t intended. But she had no clue who she was. Which meant she wouldn’t know who he was either.

He blinked. And he blinked again. “How are you?”

“They said I can have my own room today. And then I won’t have to be here with all the other really sick people. Who are you?”

It took him a minute to think on that. She didn’t know. Who was he now? Edward or Ted? Which would be safer for her?

He smiled, slipping into his country boy routine. At least the smile was real. He hadn’t wanted to kill her, but it had been necessary at the time.

“I’m Ted. We used to work together sometimes. You flew down to Santa Fe to help me last year, we were hunting a vampire.”

“We were?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting up. “Does that mean we hunt the one who was here earlier? Cause I don’t like him. Or the other guy.” Her face scrunched up. “They were inside my head. That’s not right. I’m not even inside my head!”

Edward almost laughed. She didn’t like the boys. Finally. She just had to spend five months in a coma to realize it. Of course, it couldn’t have been easy to know it when they could insert themselves and their thoughts into her head.

He’d been doing a lot of research since she’d gone into the hospital. With Marianne, the witch Anita had studied with before. And she had told him things that she would never tell Anita.

Like how it was possible, even probable, that the wolf and vampire had been placing the love she felt for them inside her. That it wasn’t hers, just something they created.

And how they were using her, pulling her strength away from her to increase their own powers.

And how they made it where she could never kill them without dying herself. That was a stroke of genius. No better way to ensure your safety than to get one of the best preternatural hunters in the country, maybe world, bound to you.

Of course, Marianne believed that Anita could survive their deaths. And if they died then these… _chakra_ points she had said were open would be closed as the bindings were slipped and she came back to herself.

But this wasn’t something he could tell her. Instead, he would tell her what Marianne had instructed him to, so that she could get her shields up. Very, very strong shields. Since she wouldn’t be using her magic for anything else, they would be strong indeed.

“I can help you get them out of your head, Anita. But right now, I don’t think you’re ready to hear the entire story of how they got there. Would you like me to tell you how?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

She nodded. “Oh, yes. Please. I don’t want them there anymore.”

Her eyes unfocused for a moment and Edward had the eerie feeling that one of the others was looking out at him. He stared back and let his smile slip into the coldness he was capable of.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you get them out.”

And she was back, herself again.

So he explained what Marianne had told him, how to build the shield, visualizing it. And he waited for the small signs that it was up and fully functional. She was concentrating now on building it up, a tower, brick by brick. Making the inside as smooth as glass, the outside as slippery as oil. No one would be able to come in without her permission; she was powerful enough for that.

And then it was there. Her face relaxed and the tension in her body slid away. Her eyes opened and she looked at him, smiling widely.

“I think it worked. I can’t hear them or feel them now. Thank you!”

Edward smiled back. “You’re welcome, Anita.”

“How did you learn to do this?”

“Your teacher told me, Anita. So that you would be safe when you woke.” Because Marianne had no doubt that Anita would wake up. Maybe not soon, but she would. “She’s here in St. Louis. She’s been waiting for you. Would you like her to come see you?”

Anita thought about it. “Will she be able to teach me more?”

He nodded.

She smiled again. “Yes. I’d like to learn more.”

And he smiled again, this time letting it reach his eyes. The boys were in for a surprise now. And he was finally in the position to give Anita the protection she was so desperately going to need.


	6. Chapter 6

Anita was asleep as Edward stepped silently into her private room three weeks later. Despite the initial memory loss from the brain damage, she was recovering quickly, needing only a review of sorts on how to function as an adult. Her vocabulary and living skills needed only a reminder before they began coming back, along with brief memory surges that defied all odds.

According to Marianne, that was due to the tight bindings the vampire and wolf had set upon her, but would by no means bring Anita back to full speed. After all, the bullet had caused severe brain trauma, not just bruising her brain but actually slicing into by almost a centimeter, which should have been enough to kill her.

But it wasn’t, and Edward was not sorry she had lived.

He let out an exhausted breath as he sank into the chair at her bedside. He had just come from yet another meeting with Anita’s boys, blackmailing and forcing them into staying away from her. So when Anita was released in the morning she would be going back to her own house, where Edward and Marianne had set up shop.

Or rather, where Edward had made a makeshift fortress and Marianne had magically fortified it. There would be no way that anyone (or anything) would get in without either of them knowing and spiriting Anita away from their protection.

It would be worth it if she could only have a little peace. He was trying to give her as much of that as possible.

Which was why he wasn’t going to tell her that more than fifty bodies had risen in the morgue in the last two weeks. Once she had recovered from the initial trauma, something in her brain had reconnected and suddenly dead people had walked. It had had several doctors screaming miracles. It had several other doctors just screaming.

It had families traumatized and hysterical as they watched their loved ones rise from the dead only to seemingly die again as soon as Edward could get Anita drugged. And there was no need at _all_ to share that one of the zombies had risen as a man eating fiend. That one he had incinerated within minutes of it attacking its streak of victims.

It had risen while an important autopsy was being handled—a visiting official—and most of St. Louis’ local government had been in attendance, either in the autopsy suite or the outer anteroom. It wouldn’t have been as bad as it was if the cold storage hadn’t been attached to the autopsy suite. The zombie had risen and gone through everyone before making its way up to the ground floor and the emergency room.

Luckily for everyone, Edward had parked towards the back of the parking garage. The fastest way to the elevators was through the emergency room waiting area, and he had been cutting through it when the zombie had stumbled, shrieking, into the mass of people waiting for attention. He considered himself even luckier that an old can of hair spray had been sitting on the counter. A woman there had been emptying her overlarge purse out in an attempt to find her insurance card, and it had been inside.

He had grabbed it and, after yelling for someone to give him a lighter, he had created a miniature flamethrower. The zombie had caught quickly and burned thoroughly. Within minutes it was twitching on the floor as the ground level sprinklers went off, but even then it could not be put out.

No one in the morgue had died thought there were several close calls. Three of them were still in intensive care, the rest were all still patients in regular rooms, except for the medical examiner. She had escaped by hiding under the autopsy table amidst dripping blood from the body being autopsied.

It had been ruled natural causes, untreated prostate cancer.

He was still thinking about how to contain her zombie raising skills when he fell asleep, his hands folded across his stomach, head tipped forward to let his chin rest on his chest.

 

When Anita woke, Edward was the first thing she could see, and she wondered what he’d been doing to be so pale and tired. She knew that he’d been in every day since she’d woken up; so had Marianne. But Anita hadn’t wondered what Edward did when he wasn’t visiting her.

She wondered now, as she watched him sleeping as the sun rose, pale and golden through the light green curtains of the hospital windows. The green only accentuated the circles under his eyes that she thought maybe looked like bruises. They stood out harshly against his pale skin, skin that had lost color as every day went by.

He visited her at night. Maybe he worked at night, also. It would make sense. Not that any of this made sense.

She slid the cover off of her legs and swung them over the side, taking care to step into her slippers before heading to the wardrobe. Inside were the clothes Edward had brought last week when the doctors had told her she would go home today. She was excited to leave, excited about everything, even though she tried her best to hide it.

Somehow, she knew that Edward and Marianne would caution her against it, even while they understood her euphoria. So she kept it to herself, a small freedom against the larger cage she lived in. _It will be even bigger after today_ , she thought with a grin as she silently slid her clothes from within the armoire.

It was better to be happy and excited than to be scared. Which was how she felt in the deepest recesses of her soul, somewhere she did not want _anyone_ going to, not even herself, though she knew it was there. If Edward even guessed how frightened she was, he would pull the plug on the whole thing and have her installed in some mental hospital until she was fully recovered.

_Of course_ , she thought, _a full recovery may never happen._

She knew that there was a slim chance of recovering everything she used to be. She also knew that the more time went by, the less likely she would remember. She’d been in a coma for months, been awake for three weeks. In that amount of time she had relearned how to be human, seemingly like a fish taking to water.

Reminding her brain what its job was. Reminding her limbs and muscles what they were meant for. Trying to remind herself of who she was, but not quite ever making it.

She sighed as she climbed back onto the bed, fully clothes, her shoes in hand. It would be a long time before she was finished being scared, she knew, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, she had two very good people protecting her.

She smiled as she reached one bare foot out to nudge Edward’s leg. The smile grew as he immediately came to, alert and focusing on her even as his hand brushed his gun. His eyes were hot and blue, not unattractive but altogether unsettling since she’d learned what he was capable of.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Edward,” she answered, “I’m ready to go home.”


	7. Chapter 7

Three more weeks did little to change Anita’s outlook on life and her situation. Nothing else had been gained while relearning, though Edward and Marianne hadn’t been rushing to take her out hunting or shooting. Nor had she been permitted to return to work, which was a good thing, she supposed, since she wasn’t exactly sure what she did much less how she did it.

Sleep was hard to find. When she would lie down at night she now felt as though there were some type of band inside her, stretched and tightened near to breaking, and the tension of it kept true relaxation from her. Only when she was truly exhausted would she finally be able to close her eyes and let it go. She would exercise herself into exhaustion for it, and had told no one, not even Edward.

Always, though, the tension was gone when she woke. And always, Edward would be missing when she woke. Marianne would tell her that he had been called out and she would let it go, knowing it for a lie but more afraid to know the truth. Especially since she had heard the whispers.

Freak. Monster. All kinds of labels that made her wonder what exactly she was, since she wasn’t human.

But things were different tonight. She’d finally fallen asleep after what felt like hours of restless tossing and turning, only to find herself in a place she did not recognize. A basement, she guessed. Or perhaps subterranean palace would have suited it better, since it didn’t look like a basement at all, but a decadent and lavish dwelling.

The two men she had feared were there. Jean-Claude and Richard, she knew their names. But they weren’t what they had seemed to her. She remembered back in the hospital, how nice and gentle they had pretended to be, and how she had known it wasn’t real. Looking at this, it seemed so much more real than that.

There was blood and anger. And somehow she was in the middle of it, though she didn’t realize it in her dream. Only watching allowed her to see it. Jean-Claude was angered by her, for her morals. And he blamed her on causing him to break his. Richard was angered by her needs, she had made him be… king?

But it didn’t seem right to her and she moaned in her sleep as the dream melded into something else. She whimpered, not wanting to watch the myriad flashes of pain and suffering she had caused at their behest. _It’s not me_ , she cried silently. _I would never do that_!

And when she woke she said nothing. It continued night after night until the lack of rest began to show itself more blatantly, with her falling asleep at odd times during the day. But even then she watched as she did things she couldn’t dream of doing, allowing these two creatures into her life, into her soul, in ways she believed were wrong.

And then, not too very long after it had begun, Edward finally asked her.

“Anita, what the hell is wrong?” His voice was heated, more by annoyance at her for not telling him there was a problem. “You fell asleep during dinner. Again. What gives?”

He wasn’t prepared for the pain in her eyes, or for the tears that began to well. He wasn’t prepared for the vulnerability, and he cursed himself as he sat down next to her and awkwardly slipped an arm around her shoulder. He had never known how to handle a woman in tears, but that, he expected, was something no man ever learned.

Unless he’d been around her a lot. And even after more than six years he still didn’t know how to handle Anita without a gun in her hands. Something he regretted, yes, but unchangeable.

He listened as she told him about the dreams, in varying degrees of detail and always frighteningly real. He could picture it in his mind easily. Some more easily than others, since he was hearing something from her perspective that he had already watched from his.

Then the tears began to flow. “They’re not just dreams, are they? They happened, I did it, but I wouldn’t do that! I would _never_ do those things!” She stopped and turned her face up to his. “I wouldn’t, but I did, didn’t I?”

He sighed. “It’s in the past. You can’t change it, but you don’t have to dwell on it.” His personal credo. “But you do need sleep.”

She nodded, watching him. “Any ideas,” she asked, her voice soft and tired.

“Drugs,” he answered. He laughed at her startled look. “Not street drugs. Prescription sleeping pills. I got them from Dr. Lillian. She thought they might come in handy for you.”

He’d had them stuffed into his suitcase for more than a month, waiting for the time she would need them. He hadn’t realized that they might be required for something other than dampening her animating powers. He’d only thought to prevent anymore flesh-eating zombie raisings. That had been enough for him to last awhile, and he expected that if she’d known, she’d agree.

The look that passed Anita’s face was one of relief and, for just a moment, a look of desperation. He resolved never to let her have the actual bottle, to only leave it in Marianne’s care. Just knowing the things she was capable of made him wary, made her dangerous, and he didn’t want to give her the chance of taking the easy way out. Not when she was still wrapped up in the monsters.

And with that, things were peaceful.

 

But only for a time. She could only take the pills for so many days, ongoing. When her seven days were up, she dreaded the night. She feared the tossing and turning that would ultimately lead to the nightmares, and instead was pleasantly surprised to find she could fall asleep easily.

She had no way of knowing that Edward had slipped a crushed and ground third of one into her dinner. And he had no way of knowing that it would be just enough to prevent her from escaping the dream world she would be creating that night.

Neither had any way of knowing that it would undo the most careful of plans, and in the end might cost them both the scant protection they both gained from her lack of memory. And so she dreamed, and so she remembered.

It was dark, as it always was. She had never been much of a light person, always preferring the intimacy of the night, the way it could hide things, even from herself. She was walking in a cemetery, her hands full with her zombie bag, whatever that was, and her hand on her gun. Just in case.

She’d just finished a raising and she was so tired. It was almost dawn, she’d done an even eight raisings since she’d left home a lifetime before. She dropped the bag and pulled her keys to open the trunk.

Then it happened. An arm grabbing her from behind, the hand going over the butt of the Browning, so that she was only grabbing at the back of it, not the gun. A face pressed up against her neck, cheek to skin, and a harsh whisper that she wanted to forget.

“I’m sorry, Anita. I love you.”

And then she tried to scream her way out of the dream, not wanting to feel but helpless against it as she was turned ever so slightly and the barrel pressed to her temple. There was a slight jerk, a burning, shattering sensation to her head, and she was let go, lowered gently to the ground.

She could barely hear the sounds of the night as her ears rang with the sound of the shot. But she knew, somehow she knew, the feel of lips against her cheek, against her own. The wet of tears, the murmur of a soft voice saying goodbye.

Her fingers were curled into claws against the sheets as she tried to fight it, tried not to feel it as he left her alone. Somehow she was moving, somehow she was back in that basement, somehow she was collapsing into the arms of the vampire, and then it was gone. Blank, empty, utterly silent.

She jerked upright in the bed, screaming. She couldn’t do it again, couldn’t be gone again. That’s what it was, that was when she’d died and before she’d come back and she couldn’t do it again.

Then Edward was there, followed by Marianne, both trying to comfort her, to find out who had hurt her and where they had gone. Looking at him was too much and she scrambled back against the wall, as far away from Edward as she could get.

“Don’t touch me, please stay away from me,” she gasped as she trembled there.

He watched her, eyes slowly going blank to hide his confusion, and then his growing fear. “Anita, what happened? Was it another dream?”

She looked away from him, glanced at Marianne’s eyes, then back. In a voice that was barely stable, she answered him. “It was a dream. I remembered it.”

“You shot me, Edward.”


	8. Chapter 8

Edward’s mind swam as he thought about Anita. She knew he’d shot her, however easily she may have been convinced otherwise. He knew, she knew, and there was no backing out now. He cursed as he yanked his shirt over his head and threw it into a corner of the bathroom.

The mirror was beginning to steam from the hot water running as he peered into it, looking for the explanation of insanity in an otherwise normal face. Normal. He laughed harshly as he let his gaze skim down the reflection of his chest, most noticeably stopping at the shiny pink scar tissue where he’d been staked last year.

Normal people didn’t shoot their self-proclaimed soul mates in the head and then leave them for dead. Most people didn’t take over every aspect of the shot soul mate when they amazingly lived. Of course, most soul mates wouldn’t live through the ordeal, but that didn’t mean anything special.

Just that she was a miracle.

A miracle he was always trying to forget, and always coming back to. Even to the point where he was living with her, he mused as he broke from the mirror and finished stripping his clothes off. He hissed out a breath as the steaming water made contact with his skin, and then began scrubbing himself with hard strokes, almost to the point of drawing blood.

He rinsed and stepped out, bringing the towel to his face and scrubbing water away. The darkness as the towel covered his eyes was enough to send him back to that night for a moment, remembering the feel of her hands on him, tight in fear and panic. Then, once he’d spoken, loosening their grip.

As if for a moment she didn’t believe that he would kill her. Because the voice was the same one that had told her he would rather hunt her, to see who was better. That he’d never shoot her in the back.

She’d known who he was when he’d shot her. All because he had to tell her, one last chance and he had to tell her much he cared. How much he loved her. Never mind how sorry he was that it had come to this.

His eyes were hot and his throat tight as he dropped the towel and threw open the door to the adjoining bedroom. His room, the room Anita had granted him use of because she trusted him. He cursed himself soundly and silently as he pulled clothes onto his still wet body and began throwing things into a duffel bag.

She didn’t need him here.

 

When she woke again in the morning, Anita had almost forgotten the dream she’d had. On the heels of Edward’s assurances that it was just that, a dream, she’d managed to calm herself enough to find sleep again. She was almost whistling as she stepped out of her room, fresh from a shower and thinking about coffee and croissants.

Things were beginning to look up, she felt like it was getting better. She had friends who cared about her and wanted to protect her, she had a roof over her head, and her nightmares were just that. Nightmares.

Then she walked into the kitchen. Marianne was sitting at the table, leafing through a book over her coffee, Edward was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Edward, Marianne?” she asked as she poured herself a cup.

Marianne didn’t look up. “He left,” was all she said.

The pit of Anita’s stomach began to grow cold. “Where’d he go? I thought we had enough groceries.”

Marianne looked over her coffee at Anita as she drank. Holding the mug between both hands, she said, “He left last night. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

Anita’s cup hit the table with a loud thud, nearly spilling as hands that could no longer quite feel thunked it there. Edward had left, after telling her that her dream was a dream. She felt bile rising in the back of her throat. Had he lied to her?

Anita spent the rest of her morning sitting in front of her coffee.

 

Edward returned two days later. He’d barely managed a shower, some minor bandaging and tossing the insides of his duffel on the bed before Marianne was tapping lightly at his door and letting herself in. he sighed as he caught a glimpse of the grave look on her face and turned, plopping himself down onto the bed.

“We need to talk, Edward,” she said with no preamble. “Your disappearance did not help your explanation any. She believes that you’re planning to kill her again, I think, and she’s afraid of you.”

“Can’t have that, now can we?” came his sarcastic response.

“No, we can’t.” Her voice was hard as nails and she physically withheld her desire to hit him in the head, much like she did her brothers. “You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and face this dilemma. We knew that it might come to this.”

He lay back on the bed, trying to ignore her as she sat in silence. It was much easier, he decided, to ignore someone who was trying their hardest to maintain your attention. He found it much harder to ignore Marianne as she sat there, so smug that he was paying attention. Which he was, which was why it was so annoying.

After a time, his voice broke the silence. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t even want to kill her.”

“I know.”

“She’ll hate me.”

Marianne didn’t say anything as she looked at him after he’d said it. One arm was flung over his eyes, hiding them from the light. The other was carefully arranged by his side, a white bandage on his lower bicep. He looked very young and frightened to her, and not for the first time she wondered who he was, exactly, and what had driven him into his life, trained him to make his choices.

“I think,” she began softly, “that maybe you should let Anita decide that for herself. She’ll understand what you did and why, and she’ll come to terms with it on her own.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“I won’t be.”

She sounded so sure that he almost believed.


	9. Chapter 9

Edward sighed as he knocked on the door to Anita’s room. He didn’t want to have to explain to her that he’d shot her and hoped it had killed her. He wasn’t even sure where to start, but if Marianne were right, she would eventually know that it was him without a doubt. Her trust would be undermined even more if he waited. So he waited patiently for her to answer.

Her face was pale and her eyes dark and smudged with sleep as she cracked the door. “This better be good,” she grumbled as he walked past her.

Edward almost smiled, it sounded so much like the woman he’d known for seven years that it was painful. The almost smile quickly faded from his mind as she gestured for him to sit down while she crawled back under the heavy blanket on her bed. Once it was firmly pulled over her head he grabbed the bottom and yanked it back down.

“We need to talk,” he said, his tone empty and his face sliding into the blank mask that had served him so well for so long. “Marianne says you’re still having that dream.”

Anita grumbled as she rolled over to face him. “Yes.” Her voice was tight and her eyes shadowed as she looked at him.

He could see the tension in her body and wondered if she was preparing to fight him or if she was ready to run. The thought that she was thinking either of those sent a sudden painful wave throughout his body and he sighed. Yes, she needed to know.

“Give me your word that you’ll hear me out before deciding anything. Please,” he added on, knowing that it might be the last time he said that to her. He could only count the number of times he said it to her on one hand, but he knew that he meant it every time it was said.

Not that it made a difference.

Anita nodded, her expression guarded, and for a second Edward was again amazed at the recovery she had made after the initial blankness left by the coma. But she was known for her miracles, she’d had several minor ones when he was with her, including coming back to life more than once.

Maybe he’d get another miracle from her in the form of forgiveness.

“It’s not a dream. It happened.” He stopped, trying to figure out what was going through her mind, how much of that night she had dreamed, how much he could leave out without her knowing it. Not much, he decided. She was someone who needed how’s and why’s, not bare bones of a matter.

“Do you remember anything about the trip you took to Santa Fe to help me? It was about two years ago,” he continued when she shook her head, making him think that she wouldn’t say anything till he finished. “I needed help on a case, we ended up taking care of it. But while you were there my ex-fiancé got tangled up with some people who work for this man.”

“They kidnapped her children and tortured them on his orders, his and another man’s. This gives you an idea of what he’s like.” Another pause as he gathered his rambling thoughts, then, “He trained me. He was my mentor until I managed to leave the organization.”

“It wasn’t… I left. I ran and changed my identity.” His hands were palm up, fingers lightly spread as if he were asking her to understand with them and not his words. They spoke, not the pain and almost fear in his eyes as he explained the things he had done under Van Cleef’s orders, whether he wanted to or not.

“And when he tracked me down he went after what he thought would hurt me the most. He even managed to do a favor for one of his supporters at the same time, so I can understand why he did it. But we got them out, they lived.”

“And then he went after you.”

Something flickered across Anita’s face as he said that and Edward stopped dead in his tracks. There was no way that Anita could know about the package, the photos, the surveillance that had been done on her. There was no way, but she knew something, even if she couldn’t tell him what it was.

Edward cursed the memory slips that made her lose things. If Van Cleef had met with her he needed to know. There would be no way to protect her without knowing, even though with the knowledge there may be no way of protecting her anyway.

“I remember someone in the graveyard,” she said softly. “It was before you came here, I think. And I know he told me something. It was about you and me, and he threatened me. I think I killed him.”

Edward felt his mask slip for a moment and prayed that it did not reveal the terror her words and put into him. Van Cleef had already sent someone after her, but thank God he hadn’t known how violent Anita’s proclivities were. He would never have expected her to kill someone that quickly.

So maybe Anita would be safe for a bit yet, since the operative hadn’t returned. He could hope.

“He sent me a package. There was nothing in it but pictures of you and a note saying he was going to bring you into his fold. I knew you’d fight, maybe even kill some of his people and get killed yourself. But I couldn’t take the chance,” he said, hating how his voice was pleading to her, and he looked away.

“I couldn’t take the chance that he would get you and force you into it. So I decided that it would be safer with you dead.” He laughed, a short, harsh sound. “It was one thing when I was his best. I’m just a human, nothing special except I’m damned good at what I do.”

“You…” His eyes slipped back up to hers, burning coldly with blue fire. “You aren’t just a human. You’re a necromancer and with the power you have… What he could do if he controlled you is something that scares even me. He could control the world and no one would be able to stop him, if only he had you at his command.”

Edward’s jaw clenched and he breathed out long and slow, his hands loosening from the fists they’d been unknowingly clenched into. “It was bad enough with you playing puppet to the wolf and the lord of the undead. But at least you didn’t know about it and neither of them wanted to take it farther than St. Louis.”

Anita sat up, almost too quickly for him to see, another reminder that she wasn’t quite human anymore and maybe, just maybe, he had done the right thing.

“They did what?” Her voice was hard and demanding. She was pissed, and that wasn’t such a bad thing if she was finally pissed at her toys. But it had taken so long.

“Can’t you remember any of it?” he asked, exasperated that even now she had no idea what they’d done to her.

“I remember,” she began slowly, “Because I dreamed of some things that you and the others have told me is true. But I wouldn’t do any of these things that I dreamed of. It’s just not me.”

Edward sighed. “You didn’t even know what was you and what was them, not after you married the marks. You told Marianne that.”

Anita frowned, her brow creasing and her teeth worrying at her lower lip as she thought. “If I’m getting this right, things got… worse after we did that. I started doing things that I would never have done.” She looked up at him and he could see the realization dawning in her eyes. “I started doing those things because I let them into my mind, and they made me.”

“No, not made me—tricked me,” she said, her voice hard with anger.

Edward just sat there. He knew how she felt as she realized it; he would have felt the same way.

Anita’s voice was controlled as she spoke next. “Okay, I need away from them, that’s a given. And no,” she said before he could ask, “You can’t kill them. I’ll figure out what to do with them later.”

“For now, I need to figure out what to do about you.”

Edward’s heart nearly stopped. She would be within her rights to want him dead, he wouldn’t even try and stop her if she decided to kill him. At least if he were dead, Van Cleef wouldn’t keep going after her because of him.

“I need space,” she said after a long silence. “I need some time to myself. There’s a big difference between thinking and knowing, and right now I just can’t deal with what I know. So I need you to go.”

She took a deep breath and pulled the blanket a little closer around her. “It scares me,” she went on. “Knowing that you tried to kill me and that now you’re living with me.”

That hurt him, and Edward felt something inside of him click off. For now, the hurt wouldn’t surface, he knew. He wouldn’t feel pain from hearing her say she was afraid of him. But only for now. Sooner or later it would come out. Probably sooner, knowing that he cared for as much as he did.

And he didn’t want to be near her when that happened.

He knew if she witnessed it that it would hurt her, because that’s how she was. She didn’t like causing pain, not where her friends were concerned. Assuming that he was still her friend. He stood, watching her as her eyes followed him to the door.

“For what it’s worth, Anita, I am sorry.”

She watched as he walked out, listened to the muffled sounds of him throwing the few clothes he had there into a bag, and tried not to cry as she heard the front door close softly. But when she heard the engine of his car turn over and catch she couldn’t hold the tears back. She didn’t even try to.

Instead, she huddled into a tight ball under the covers and cried herself to sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the most common venue for Van Cleef’s headquarters is Santa Fe/Albuquerque I chose a different place. AT-4 is the military designation for a rocket launcher. They are way fun to use. (Yes, I’ve done it before.)

Forty-eight hours later, Edward was crouching in the bushes behind one of the smallest buildings in the down town district of Beaumont, Texas. Usually a busy and bustling city, he found it quiet and poorly traveled at two in the morning. The building itself had moderate security and would fit no more than an office, a file room, and a lobby.

It was a very carefully put together endeavor, a small attorney’s practice, rarely hired and often fired. But he earned a sizable retainer for merely continuing to practice out of the office and ignoring the comings and goings of various persons out of the file room. It also didn’t hurt that he was a prior employee of Van Cleef’s.

Underneath it was a completely different world. The only thing it had in common with the surface was that most of the people carried guns there, and throughout Texas. It was a winding subbasement of thick, concrete walls, training rooms and firing ranges. There was even a specially constructed range for AT-4’s and other heavy artillery.

It was also where Edward had spent his formative years. From the time he was sixteen to the time he was twenty, he had live in Orange and commuted to Beaumont daily every morning for firearms and tactical training. Afternoons were taken back to Orange for outdoors survival and other skills necessary to learn.

He was going to be putting all of those skills to use now.

There was no fear in picking the lock and creeping through the dark, carefully concealing himself from the hidden video surveillance. Once close enough, he cut wires until they were inoperative and continued on to the file room.

This would be the hardest part. Getting through the secured door to the lower levels, and he let the nerves drift away until he felt empty and numb, like ice.

He wore black, all military issue that he had picked up at an Army Surplus store. He’d hand dyed the utility belt from olive drab to black, as well as the pouches attached to it. He reached inside one and withdrew a small stack of mirrors.

After slipping on a pair of oddly shaped glasses he was able to see the infrared lasers he would need to bypass. He didn’t have the security code to enter at the door, thus the mirrors.

As he carefully positioned them, he watched as the laser beam was diverted into each mirror, until it completed a new circuit around the room allowing him to walk past unobstructed. Once done he went to a file cabinet in the middle. It wasn’t hard to slide it aside, it had been designed for easy repositioning.

Below were stairs leading straight into darkness. As he descended he prayed there hadn’t been any new security measures added, or all of his careful planning upstairs would be fruitless. When no one stormed up the stairs, a breath escaped him. One he hadn’t even known he’d been holding.

At the bottom was a heavy steel door. The ball pinions it was settled on would let him swing it easily inward. If he could crack the password within two minutes. That would be the second hardest part.

He swung the light pack on his back around and pulled out a small, handheld computer. It was the size of his hand when it was held flat and extended. It had no function other than to crack passwords and had stood him well for years.

It did so again as it had the lock clicking open in under a minute and twenty seconds, letting him stuff it back into the bag, reposition it and creep silent and still down the hallway. There was no one in the hall; he hadn’t expected anyone to be at this time of night. It was two-eighteen exactly and the roaming security patrol would be to the back of the facility.

He only needed to penetrate to the center, Van Cleef’s private office and rooms. Only to the center, where Van Cleef was sleeping. Even now as he swept through the dark pulling a knife, its blade honed carefully until it could slice through a piece of silk as it was draped across it.

It had been years since he’d been down here and the memories threatened to overwhelm him, even behind his carefully constructed ice walls. He blinked twice as he reached the door to Van Cleef’s inner sanctum. He could count on one hand the number of times he had been allowed to enter.

Once when he had entered the training program, once when he was preparing for graduation, and once when he had requested permission to leave the organization.

His face set into a mask of stone as he recalled how he had been laughed at for wanting to leave. That was the day he had been given the only assignment that he hadn’t completed. That had been the day he had run. Because he wanted out, yes. But also because he realized there were lines he wouldn’t cross.

He’d left before his supposed graduation; he had reneged on the graduation assignment. He had refused to kill his parents. He couldn’t cut all of his ties to the world. So instead he had run, he had changed his own identity and that of his parents, forcing them to flee the country and go to a place not even he could find them.

He wired them money regularly—a numbered account in a worldwide bank. The only contact he had with them were messages left on answering services. He hadn’t seen them in almost eight years.

It was why he had held on to Anita’s friendship so long, she was the only constant in his life and likely the only one he would ever have until Van Cleef was killed. She could take care of herself. Except that he had brought her to Van Cleef’s attention by hanging on to her so tightly.

His own fault, and now he was paying for it.

He used one hand to pull his lock pick from his belt and slid it silently into the lock. In less than twenty seconds it had turned over and he was replacing the pick, hand going to the handle and turning. Once inside it was a few short steps to the inner door, leading to the room Van Cleef bunked in.

There wasn’t even the need to pull the pick back out, he discovered as the door swung inward, nearly blinding his eyes with harsh light. His knife went up reflexively and it was the only thing that kept him from taking a bullet in the head. Instead the aim was adjusted and he felt the burning pain as a bullet penetrated his shoulder.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t have security here, Edward?”

Edward’s eyes narrowed as they adjusted to the light. “Getting paranoid in your old age?” he asked as he glanced the man over. Van Cleef’s hair had gone completely white and had thinned some, but other than that he still retained the military fitness he’d always had.

He smirked at Edward. “You were the only one that got away. I always figured you’d come back to finish me off.”

Edward stiffened as Van Cleef adjusted his aim again. Without thinking he tossed the knife up, catching it by the blade and flicking his wrist, sending the knife arcing to the older man’s body as he turned and ran. He could hear gunfire behind him but didn’t dare turn to see where it came from, especially since none of it was hitting him.

Instead he ran on, up the stairs and out into the chilly predawn air. Once there he made it to his car before squeezing a hand to his bleeding shoulder. He could feel the blood seeping from his fingers as his numbing hand fumbled for the keys and started the car.

As he bled her carefully drove himself to the hospital, praying that he would recover enough to defend himself when Van Cleef came for him. Because come for him he would, and if Edward was to have any chance of saving himself and protecting Anita, he would need to be ready.


	11. Chapter 11

A day later he was stitched and drugged, lying on a colorless bed in a colorless hospital room. Mentally, he amended the drugged part to supposedly drugged. He had pulled the needle out and was letting gauze soak the painkillers up. It was safer if he was sober.

Especially since he had a 9mm under his pillow in the middle of the hospital. He expected company soon, since he’d checked in under his assumed name with a patently false story of a bounty hunt going wrong. Even the emergency room personnel had raised eyebrows at that, though they had let it slide when he flashed his bounty hunter credentials.

He squirmed to one side, detesting the thing pillow that let him feel every hard ridge on the gun. The least they could have done was give him a second, he thought as he flipped through stations on the television.

A television he wasn’t even paying attention to. The door was far more important.

He cursed the open backed hospital gown as he sat up, and cursed again as he pulled the stitches in his shoulder. He had nine, front and back, and they itched and stung. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and for a moment thought about just letting the needle and IV line dangle as he went to the bathroom.

He decided against it since the nurses would probably drug him with something stronger in the hopes of countering the time he was without. He’d rather put up with the throbbing in his shoulder over being drugged and slow.

That would get him killed.

 

Three days later he was still waiting to be killed. He was almost hoping for it. Anything was better than the itching in his shoulder, something that would have been nothing if only he had kept the needle in. instead he had to wait for someone to come kill him.

He was fiddling with the tape on his wrist when the door swung open and Van Cleef entered alone. He was wearing a tailored suit compared to Edward’s hospital gown. There wasn’t even the telltale bump of a shoulder holster.

But it was there, Edward knew it as he leaned back on his bed and let his head flop against the pillow. “Back to finish me off?”

“Better you than me, boy.”

Edward just stared. There was no way for Van Cleef to know that the gun secreted away in Edward’s hospital room was close by. There was no way for him to know that it wasn’t even under the pillow, an awkward place to reach for one when you were injured and your opponent wasn’t.

There was no way for him to know that it was already aimed at him, under a blanket, safety off.

“I was thinking the same thing, old man.”

Van Cleef’s eyes glinted. “Go to hell,” he said.

“You first,” came Edward’s reply as Van Cleef was clearing his gun from its holster. It was too slow, even against an injured man.

Edward had squeezed three rounds off before the gun was out and aimed, two body shots and one throat shot as Van Cleef’s body fell. The eyes seemed to stare for a moment as the body crumpled to the floor, and then they were gone, hidden behind a sheet of blood matted in snow-white hair.

Edward dropped back against the bed again from where he’d sat up in tension as he’d pulled the trigger. He let a long breath out and closed his eyes. It was almost over. One last thing, he told himself as he forced his body up and out of the bed.

His feet slipped in the blood but he ignored that as he knelt by the body. A nurse, one of the few who wasn’t screaming, jerked the door open and gasped at the sight of the body on the floor. Edward knew how she saw it, a well dressed grandfatherly type shot to death, but he already had his plans.

He slipped a vial out from under the thick mattress on the bed and palmed it, looking up at the nurse and staying very calm in the face of the chaos. “Bring me a syringe quickly, I need to take a blood sample for verification.”

Within minutes she had it for him, and an empty vial for the blood, too. As she tried to calm the people outside the room and block the sight of so much blood, he quickly siphoned the blood from his vial into the other, remembering to stab into the crook of Van Cleef’s arm to leave evidence blood was taken.

Once he had it he grabbed papers from the stand next to his bed, preparing to flash them as various members of the police force swarmed the room. Standing easily he held them out to the first one who stopped to look at him.

“Here’s a spare copy of the bounty order on this man, he’s a rogue shifter who’s wanting for murdering more than a dozen children in a New Mexico school.” He knew it would stand up; he’d planted the story years before so he had a cover when he finally killed Van Cleef.

He tossed the vial to the cop and sat back down on the bed. “You can take the sample and have it compared in less than an hour. Once that’s done I want to accompany you to watch the body incinerated.” He knew it would be done quickly once the blood was verified against the data on the paperwork.

Couldn’t risk any of them getting the terminally furry problem along with sleepless nights and ex-wives everywhere they looked.

It was quickly done and he didn’t even have to sign himself out of the hospital to join them in disposing of the body. Conveniently there was a facility in the bowels of the hospital, a room as far from the morgue as it could be, and pristine in white and steel.

He took grim satisfaction in watching the body as it went up in flames, and then dwindled down to ashes. He stayed till it was over, until finally he could sit back and drop his face into his hands. It was done, it was finally over, and he didn’t realize how hard it had been until the tension seeped from his shoulders as though a great weight had been lifted from him.

_It’s over_ , he thought, and then he said it out loud. “It’s over.”

No one turned to look at him, he had spoken soft enough that it traveled no further than his ears. He sighed. Looking over his shoulder at the nurse behind him, hands tight on the handles of the wheelchair, he said, “I’d like to go back to my room, please.”

When he got there it was clean, no blood remained. As he settled himself into the bed and pulled the blanket over him the nurse replaced the needle and arranged the IV so that he would have a steady drip to keep him comfortable.

His last thought as he went to sleep was that now the people in his life were free. Anita was safe and his parents could come home. A sleepy smile drifted across his face as he wondered what Anita would say when he told her.


	12. Chapter 12

When Edward woke again over 48 hours had passed. It was dark outside and he had hours till dawn. His body was stiff from sleeping in one position and he wondered what he’d been dosed with that would give him such lengthy and uninterrupted sleep. Completely uninterrupted he realized as he scrambled upright and dragged the IV and stand to the bathroom with him.

His shoulder was tight, the stitches were still in, but it was healing well and the stitches would come out in another day or two, he knew. He’d had enough experience with them to know that was true.

He’d just settled himself and the IV back into his bed, having flipped on the TV, when a nurse came in. she had a tray balanced on her hip as she eased the door opened and left it cracked. The tray was full of covered dishes and, much to his chagrin, Edward’s stomach growled loudly at the mere thought of food.

The nurse smiled and brought it to him, pulling a rolling tray table over his lap and deftly adjusting it before sitting the heaping tray on it. He glanced at her nametag and flashed her one of his winning Ted smiles.

“Thanks, Mandy. I’m starved.”

The words tripped off of his tongue easily in that honey coated accent he affected. She blushed and he would swear she almost curtsied before leaving him to his food.

He applied himself to the various plates and before he knew it they were empty and he was full. The sensation was akin to being overfull and he eased back as he pushed the tray away, letting his eyes droop a little as he allowed his mind to rest. Out of habit his hand brought the phone to his ear, automatically dialing the number to his message service.

It was full, which was surprising enough that he was sitting back up and fully alert in seconds. The inbox was large enough that it should have easily gone the entire time he was in the hospital without overflowing. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood as he began listening to the various messages. The first was from two days prior.

“Edward, this is Marianne. You need to come back. Now.”

“Edward, are you there? Come back.”

“Marianne again. _Call me_ ,” and so on until the last one he listened to, and it made his blood run cold.

“Dammit, Edward. They took her and you weren’t here to protect her. No, no, don’t come for me. I’m safe. The wererats came when Anita called them; they just got here too late to keep those bastards from taking her. They’re going to kill her or break her or both and you have to stop them. I need you to—”

And it stopped. It was only hours old. He dropped the phone with a clatter and had the presence of mind to push the nurse call button before yanking the IV and searching for his clothes.

He found them as a nurse came on, not the one from before, but one that looked bullish. He could almost hear her teeth grinding as he ordered her to find his doctor, he was leaving now. Five minutes later he was still waiting, dressed and phone glued to his ear.

He was nodding his head as the doctor came in. “Yes, the two a.m. flight will be fine. Have a car waiting for me when I get there. Thank you.” He hung up.

“Mr. Forrester, I’m afraid I can’t allow you to leave. You’re simply not well enough to—”

Edward stopped him cold with a glance.

“I’ll sign out AMA. It’s a minor wound now that you’ve stitched it. Have the papers ready within the next five minutes or my lawyer will be contacting you tomorrow for keeping me here against my wishes.” His voice was cold and smooth, like ice as he finished and watched the doctor leave.

It was well under the five minutes when the papers where brought in. he glanced them over before signing and then grabbed his bag and headed out the door. From the way he walked no one could have told why he’d been there, and he headed swiftly to the elevator bank, taking the first one down to the main floor where a taxi awaited him.

From there he sped towards the airport in Houston, an hour and a half drive away, and a small fortune in taxi fees. When the driver had him there in forty minutes he tripled the cost of the fare. He was early for his plane and only took the time to review his list of supplies and verifying them against what he knew he had in St. Louis.

By the time he was on the plane he had only to land, pick up his gear, and begin the hunt.


	13. Chapter 13

When Edward stormed into the Circus of the Damned the next afternoon, the carnage that greeted him was completely unexpected. Bodies where everywhere, some in human form, some in animal form. All broken and bloodied. He hadn’t expected to recognize any of them but there were a few notables.

He’d studied up on the local pack when Anita had become so heavily involved with them. They called themselves the Thronnos Roke clan and had a fairly strong pack hierarchy if you didn’t include their current leader. He could see the second in command lying on the ground near the door, her head bent at an almost unnatural angle.

She was breathing and as he watched for mere seconds, her head straightened out minisculely, her bones re-knitting and pulling her head back into place. But he knew it wouldn’t last, she would be permanently deformed. He could see the two bodyguards on the ground near her, slashes to ribbons, but both still alive.

As he glanced around he realized most of the bodies were still breathing. There were only a handful that weren’t and none, so far as he could see, were any of Anita’s special projects.

The only one that was doing more than just breathing was propped against a wall. The door leading to the lower levels of the Circus was behind him and Edward drew a gun carefully as he neared.

The blond man was pale and dark blood streaked his face and body as he looked up. Relief washed over his face and Edward wondered if he needed the gun at all. He thought a moment and pulled a name out of his memory.

“Where is she, Jason?” he asked quietly, not giving anything but his words away.

Jason’s head nodded slightly and he answered, “They took her into the caves. They’re going to kill her, I think. His voice was dull with pain.

“What happened?”

Jason let out a bark of a laugh, angry and cold. “ _They_ ,” and his voice sneered the word, “brought her back here. She didn’t want to come, and they forced her. We tried to stop them after they told us they wanted the pack to join energy with them so they could force the marks fully open.”

He coughed, his chest heaving and making wet, grating noises. “Jean-Claude drained his vampires before they came here, we didn’t stand a chance with him sharing the power with Richard.” His eyes filled with tears as he looked around. “The pack is destroyed. Even if we live through this…”

“If we live we’ll still heal wrong.”

Edward holstered his gun and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. He flipped it open and looked at Jason. “I know there’s a shifter hospital near here. Give me the number so I can get you help.”

Jason’s eyes were wary and Edward offered the phone to him. “Use it, call, break it and there’s no way I can track the number. But at least wait till I get back to break it in case we need help for Anita.”

His voice was still empty as he said it: “Now tell me where I can find her.”


	14. Chapter 14

The caves were mostly dark as Edward crept along them. There was some ambient light left over from fissures that led to the surface, but only in some pieces of the catacombs. Most of it was too deep for there to be anything reminiscent of the world above. It seemed perfect to him, the final showdown, the ultimate hunt.

Until he got to the part where Anita was the victim of his quarry.

The blond wolf had told him that they would have taken her down the left hand path; it went deeper into the earth than the other. He knew that, he had once followed the other into the Circus with the wererats. That was the night Anita had killed the old Master of the City, Nikolaos. That had also been the night that the vampire had taken his first step in making Anita his prey.

That had been the night the vampire had tricked her into believing he was a beneficent leader, forced to do things he would never have done otherwise to guarantee his survival. It had also been the night when Edward started to fall in love with Anita, a night he would not soon forget.

Even now, years later, he could still recall the details perfectly, of how she looked fighting Burchard armed with nothing but a knife. Granted, it had been the size of a small sword, but watching her move as she fought had been a real eye opener. Then watching as she coldly drew her silver blade from the wrist sheath and took him down… It was then that Edward had known that Anita was someone who would survive, just as he had.

His thoughts were broken as he stumbled in the dark over a sizable rock. He caught himself against the rough wall, wincing as it bit into his hand and hoping that it hadn’t broken the skin. He didn’t believe for a second that he could sneak up on the wolf or vampire, but he wasn’t about to bleed for them.

It would make his job harder.

He stopped and tried to get his bearings in the dark, not sure how much further he would have to go. His Beretta was tucked into the back of his jeans and he had a Desert Eagle 10mm in his hands, held out at the ready. He was making his way swiftly and as silently as he could noting the faint increase in ambient light when he heard her scream.

He stumbled forward, forgetting silence as he tried to reach her. His heart was pounding and he was sweating in the darkness as he realized there was another source of light somewhere. Somewhere close. The light flickered and shadows danced as he came onto a grisly scene. The light was fire, dancing on the tips of torches, slipping across every surface and glistening against wet blood where it splashed the cavern.

There was a small pile of corpses on the floor, human as near as Edward could tell and freshly killed. Maybe even tortured some, if he was to judge by the marks on the bodies. Blood coated the vampire from head to toe. He was nude, as well. Edward assumed it was to prevent blood on his clothes. The vampire had always taken special consideration with them when he had the chance.

The wolf was clothed, but only in boots and jeans, his shirt thrown somewhere out of the way. What could be seen of his skin red with blood. There were streaks through it the looked like fingers had smudged through it and Edward thought that maybe the wolf had done most of the killing. Or maybe he’d just taken more time than the vampire.

It occurred to Edward that perhaps the victims had gone willingly to the vampire. He could use magic and mind control, where the wolf could only use brute strength, and a chill ran down h is spine. Willingly to death, what a way to go. And if he wasn’t careful it would be him next.

He steadied the gun in his hand as the wolf turned towards him, the vampire too intent on Anita, where she hung, chained to a wall. But a fleeting glance showed that she was relatively free of blood. No major injuries, only minor scrapes. She was alive. That was all that mattered.

The wolf was beginning to move towards him even as his finger squeezed down on the trigger. When the shot rang through the rock around him the wolf only flinched. He barely had enough time to see that the vampire’s head exploded in a sizzling mass before he’d been thrown into the wall. The gun dropped from his now nerveless hands and the room went black with the force of it.

He heard the clatter of metal as the gun was thrown across the cave and he winced as he was shoved against the rock harder. He could feel blood running down his back where his shirt offered scant protection and he instinctively swung out. He caught the wolf across the neck and a low growl came.

His sight began to return and he made out a faint shadow. It was enough, and he yanked a knife from a sheath at his waist, stabbing out. There was no resistance to the finely honed blade and only a grunt as it sank to the hilt. The knife was yanked away from him as the body it was buried in suddenly twisted, pulling it from his blood-slicked grip.

His heart sped up a little. He knew he didn’t have enough time to get to his other gun, much less his other knife. The rest had been left behind, deemed a hindrance in the low hung caves. His gun was across the room, the knife was now firm in the wolf’s grasp, and he was defenseless.

The knife flashed out and he had no chance to duck before it scored a line across his side. It burned as blood began to seep, no flow, out of it. Another quick jab that he half blocked with his arm. Then another and another, until his arms were slashed, to the bone in some places, and blood flowed freely. The pain in his shoulder was nothing compared to this.

This was a battle he was going to lose and he barely had the strength to try and grab the hand that grabbed him at the neck by his shirt. His eyes swept past the wolf and locked onto Anita’s. In the light they looked black and bottomless, but he could still see the tears that flowed out of them, staining her cheeks with smudged pink rivers.

He felt the wind as the knife was swung swiftly at his throat and he closed his eyes, waiting for the end, praying for Anita’s forgiveness for not getting her out, for not getting them both out. And instead of his own death knell, he heard her.

She was screaming, just one word.

“Stop!”


	15. Chapter 15

The knife stopped inches away from his throat. Edward scarcely breathed as the wolf looked at Anita. Her scream still reverberated throughout the cavern, through the rocks, and he could feel it in his body as he was held against them. Anita was staring at the knife where it lay, almost touching Edward’s throat.

Then her eyes moved up, to stare at the wolf as he watched her, gauging whether or not to finish what he had started. He could still feel the burn down the psychic tunnel to Jean-Claude from where it had been severed and then lashed back upon him.

Anita was safe, he knew. She’d sealed it off long before, when she first woke from her coma.

“Don’t you dare hurt him,” Anita said through gritted teeth. Her eyes were dark and seemed to burn as the firelight was reflected in them. She looked like a queen with blood splashed across her, a true lupa, his mate. With the vampire gone his way to her was cleared.

He laughed, low and deadly. “Are you gone to stop me?”

This knife pressed against delicate skin, breaking it slightly and causing blood to flow lightly down Edward’s throat. He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe for fear the cut would become deeper than he could live through.

“I’ll do anything you want, Richard.”

“You’ll do what I want anyway. I could kill him and complete the ritual and the spell and then you would belong to me.”

His eyes bled to amber as his beast began to rise at the thought of making her lukoi, truly lukoi, sinking his claws into her fragile flesh and turning her. Sinking other things into her and truly mating with her, shifting in that last moment.

It would be a hell of a way to turn her.

Anita laughed at him, then. High and gay and utterly uncaring. “Did you really think I wouldn’t remember, Richard?” she said, and the way she said his name made his skin crawl. “Did you really believe that it would never come back to me?”

Richard dropped the assassin and took a startled step towards her, thinking to kill her. He stopped himself. If she remembered, she would love him again. She was bluffing. “You don’t remember anything, Anita.”

The light left her eyes and fury crossed her features as she leaned against the chains, pulling them out from the wall. “I went to Jean-Claude first, Richard. You remember that.”

His eyes turned human again as fear slid down his spine. She did remember.

“You kept pushing and pushing and thank you, I remember it. And I hate you for it.” The emotion seeped from her face until she wore a dead mask.

“I remember every goddamned thing you and that bastard forced onto me, into me, and I’ll make you pay for that.” Her voice was like ice and Richard flinched.

“Not such a great wolf king are you? Not the big bad Ulfric, at all. A fucking puppy. You’re afraid of me.”

Richard stiffened at her taunting and stalked to her, the wolf coming to the front again. She wasn’t a mate or even a possible fuck now. She was the enemy and needed to be destroyed. His hands brushed her arms and then grabbed, squeezing.

And suddenly he was kneeling on the ground, feeling like someone had stuck a straw into him and took a good long suck of energy. He looked up at Anita. She was hanging against the wall, almost writhing with pleasure and distaste at the same time.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t ever fucking touch me again or I’ll drain you to a husk.” Her voice was high and tight with anger.

Richard tried to stand and ended up stumbling backwards, barely catching himself before he fell over the prostrate figure of Anita’s assassin. He almost reached down to snap the man’s neck but decided against it. He was dying anyway and Anita was a formidable enemy even when chained. He could ill afford to lose himself to that small luxury.

He took a glance at Anita and she was covered in blood. There were dozens of tiny cuts on her arms and legs, even her back from where she had dug her skin into the wall. He wondered at it, and at the dark light in her eyes as she looked past him to where Edward lay, watching her as if she were the last thing he would see on earth.

Her voice rang through the cavern, loud and heavy with magic.

“Tear him apart. When you’re done I don’t want a single piece of Richard remaining that is larger than my hand.”

Before he could race to kill her, the bodies heaped at her feet began to twitch and then rose, not shambling like movie zombies but swift and sure and deadly. And heading straight for him. He only had time for one scream before they ripped his head off.

From where Edward lay it was a gristly thing to watch, chunks of meat and blood running freely as Anita watched silently. He knew he wouldn’t last much longer and thought it best if he died. The wolf had gotten lycanthropy from a blood transfusion. If he lived, Edward might have to worry about getting it from the blood as it ran in rivers around his torn and bleeding body.

With that last thought he closed his eyes and saw nothing more.


	16. Chapter 16

He woke to anonymous hospital walls. Again. The color was the same pale eggshell in hospitals through out the country and he took no note of it as he realized that he was still alive. He was alive, which meant that maybe Anita was. She was, he knew that. She had to be or he would still be down in the caves, dead and rotting.

He started to look around, sore and stiff and mostly hazy from the drugs in his system. He reasoned that if she were alive she would have at least left his weapons. But then, that’s what the old Anita would do. The Anita he knew now would probably not.

He was surprised to see that he was right, only not in the way he’d expected. Instead of his weapons, she had left herself. The private room was not so private and she was curled on top of the bed next to him. He could tell she wasn’t a patient from her clothes.

At least, she wasn’t a patient anymore, if she had been. She didn’t even look like she’d been injured. Come to think of it, he didn’t feel like he was as injured as he knew he had been. He began tugging at the bandages that wrapped his arms and stared at the shiny pink scars that were there instead of the stitched gashes he thought would be there.

He _knew_ that several had been to the bone, had actually felt the knife as it grated against them, and they were already healed. Or they were healed and he was finally waking up. He was still trying to find an explanation when Anita stirred and sat up, stretching lazily.

She smiled brightly through sleep-hazed eyes as she looked over to see him awake. “Glad to have you back with us,” she said as she flipped her legs over the edge of the bed.

“How long have I been out?”

“Only a few days. Marianne helped speed the healing with magic before she left for Tennessee,” she answered, taking a seat at the edge of his bed and cradling one of his arms in her lap as she examined it, fingers tracing the scars gently. “You stormed the Circus and came after me four days ago. Why?”

“Why what?” he asked as he pushed the switch to make him sit up higher. He thumbed the nurse call button as he did. His throat felt scratchy and sounded worse. He needed something to drink, and he wondered for a moment if he’d been intubated. It was the only thing he could think of to explain how bad his throat felt.

“Why did you come after me?” Her eyes were wide and innocent as she asked, and he sighed.

He was saved from having to answer by the bright-eyed nurse who entered. She was wearing brightly patterned scrubs and had her light hair pulled back, revealing blue eyes and a ready grin. “I’m so glad you’re awake, Mr. Forrester. Do you need anything before I notify your doctor?”

Out of habit he made note of her nametag before speaking. “Could I get some juice or water, please, Casey?” he asked, his Ted smile pasted on his face.

She nodded, smiled and headed off to retrieve it as Anita stared at Edward expectantly. He cleared his throat and looked down, contemplating his answers. He couldn’t tell her the truth. Not yet, not from his own lips. If she remembered, then so be it.

“I came after you because you’re my friend.” Her disappointed ‘oh’ had him looking up to see her downcast eyes and the odd tilt to her mouth that made him think he’d upset her. “Do you really remember?” he asked then, almost frightened that she might say yes.

Before Anita could answer Casey returned with a cup, a bendy straw poking out of the top. “Here you go Mr. Forrester. The doctor is on his way in from his house. Do you need anything else?”

He shook his head and she left again. He turned back to Anita who was staring at him with a sad smile.

“No, I don’t really remember.” She sighed. “I remember some of it. Not all. Not even most. But enough to know that killing them was good.”

Edward reached a hand out to hers, trying to comfort her. She looked so lost, and he knew how it felt. After all, his parents had been lost to him for years, and that was nothing compared to losing yourself. Which was exactly what Anita had done.

No, she hadn’t lost it.

He had taken it from her.

Her hand tightened on his and he looked back up. “I remember something though. I remember you told me you’d always warn me. You didn’t warn me, you came up from behind. I remember it. I remember you shooting me.”

Edward’s chest tightened and he swallowed convulsively. She did remember, and if she remembered him shooting her then she might remember what he said. Please don’t, he thought as he watched her.

“I remember what you said, Edward,” she was saying. “You told me you loved me and then you killed me.”


	17. Chapter 17

“I’m sorry,” he said. It came out as a strangled whisper, the pain almost tangible. “I’m sorry, Anita, I’d do it again if I had to, but I’m sorry.”

She sat there silently as he said it, not looking at him and not looking away. Looking through him, and it scared him as she thought. The thoughts were running across her face like a movie and he looked away, not being able to bear seeing them.

Anita was confused.

On one hand the person she trusted most in the world had tried to kill her. On the other his intentions had been noble. After a fashion. Greater good. That phrase came to mind as she thought about it.

He had sacrificed her for the greater good. He hadn’t been selfish and tried to get out of it, he hadn’t tolerated the option of someone taking her and twisting her into something evil.

In the essence of it he had been protecting her, as well as everyone else.

And she had repaid him by pushing him away.

She closed here eyes and sighed. There was no escaping it. No matter how she had been frightened initially, she wasn’t anymore. It had been Anita herself who had pushed Marianne to leave and go home, Anita who had felt capable and adult again.

Like herself.

And why wasn’t she frightened? She asked herself. That was so easy to answer.

Without Richard and Jean-Claude mucking about in her head, it was painfully obvious. Because she cared. She cared about Edward and they had hidden it from her because it would only have hastened this day.

She smiled as she opened her eyes. “I remember, Edward. And there’s something I should tell you.”

Edward’s were closed, he was leaning back against the pillows, pale and wan. So tired looking. She leaned forward and pressed her lips carefully to his, eyes fluttering closed and then sitting back.

“I love you, too.”

His eyes flew open as she wedged her hand in his, fingers threading with his. “Even after what I did?”

“Especially after that. Besides,” she added with an impish grin. “I’ve always loved you.”

He smiled then, brilliant and bright. Not Ted, pure Edward. She leaned forward and kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back.

“There is one problem, Edward.”

“What’s that?” he asked, the tension seeping away from him.

“I need you to help me. I want to be like I used to be. I want to be able to protect myself and anyone else who comes along.”

He smiled, his fingers rubbing across the back of her hand. “That should be easy. After all, _you_ killed Richard.”


	18. Chapter 18

The airport was crowded, but not overly so. Two months after Edward was discharged from the hospital, he and Anita were sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs, talking about the state of preternatural politics since they’d killed the Master of the City and the local Ulfric.

Things had died down since the initial frenzy of grandstanding and challenges. Asher now held the city as Master jointly with Sylvie, the new Ulfric. Or whatever the feminine form would be. The rest of the preternatural community was falling into line as it became clear that the Executioner and Death had joined forces and, on occasion, would support the new leaders.

Beyond that they had moved from the house on the outskirts into another one, further into the city and closer to Anita’s job. She still wasn’t able to drive, but that was almost by choice now.

They both grew quiet as a loudspeaker announced the arrival and unloading of flight 1492, service through New York City from Barcelona. His hands squeezed hers and she couldn’t read his face. She’d expected to find something, but nothing showed. No nerves, no excitement.

Instead he stood and left her sitting. She waited patiently while he stood, looking through the people as they disembarked. Finally she saw him wave, and then she stood. Within minutes he was carrying two carry on bags and was leading an older woman and man to wards her.

They stopped just shy of where she stood, and she began to understand why Edward had been so careful never to tell her too much. The joy was there, no nerves, just love and relief. He held a hand out to her and she took it, stepping into his side and sliding an arm around his waist.

“Anita, I’d like you to meet my parents.”


End file.
